FROM UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS.

**Y. O. Martov.**

**FROM UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS.**

**Pskov*)**

It was not long before I came to understand the situation with which Ulyanov and Potresov acquainted me.

It turned out to be rather complicated and required swift, yet at the same time cautious decisions.

We were returning to Russia under the impression of the dominance of the "economic tendency" within the ranks of social democracy, which had led to a split in the party's leading foreign organization—the "Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad," recognized at the 1st Party Congress as its official representative, had broken apart in the following year. The group "Emancipation of Labor" together with a few supporters (B. A. Koltsov, O. S. Blumenfeld, G. Goldenberg-Meshkovsky, G. Leiteysen-Lindov, L. I. Orthodox-Axelrod and others) formed the organization "Social Democrat," while the majority of the "Union" came under the leadership of supporters of economism and revisionism—B. N. Krichevsky, V. I. Ivanshin, P. Teplov, V. Makhnovets. This split had little effect on the organizations in Russia,

*) Published with the permission of comrade I. I. Ionov, who acquired the unfinished manuscript of Volume II of Y. O. Martov's "Notes of a Social Democrat" from his heirs. The published text represents only part of Martov's manuscript. The title belongs to the editorial board.

In the published excerpt of Y. O. Martov's memoirs, we for the first time obtain a description of the "Pskov conference" given by one of its participants. Until now, there have been no data in the literature about what actually took place in Pskov. Given that of the direct participants of the conference (V. I. Lenin, Y. O. Martov, A. N. Potresov, S. I. Radchenko, I. B. Struve, and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky), only the present fierce enemy of socialism P. B. Struve and A. N. Potresov remain alive, Martov's account acquires special historical interest. Probably, L. N. Radchenko could also provide some information. *Ed.*

*Leninskii sbornik*, IV                    4

because at that time the majority of them either subjectively gravitated toward "economism," professed by the organ of the Petersburg "Union of Struggle," *Rabochaya Mysl'* [*Worker's Thought*], and rejected, as the immediate task of the working class, the struggle for the overthrow of autocracy, or made peace with it because they did not believe, given the weakness of the party, that it would practically raise this question of struggle. The mood of this party "swamp" was fully matched by the direction of the foreign Union, which in its literature, calculated for the broad masses, devoted primary attention to questions of professional-economic struggle, but incidentally exposed the role of government in the struggle between labor and capital, and in the programmatic and tactical articles of its organ *Rabochee Delo* [*Worker's Cause*] recognized in principle the task of social democracy as struggle with autocracy, only postponing the beginning of this struggle until the moment of greater consolidation of mass movement. However, the split that had occurred abroad alarmed some elements of the social democracy operating in Russia. Although the "Emancipation of Labor" group, unlike the recently emigrated leaders of the "Union," possessed weak personal connections with members of the organizations operating in Russia, nevertheless its polemical works, occasioned by the split, reached Russia and awakened among some old Marxists alarm regarding the deviation of party development in the direction of eradicating revolutionary content from the program and practice. Particularly effective in this regard, as I subsequently became convinced, was a small pamphlet by P. B. Axelrod, "Open Letter to the Editors of *Worker's Cause*," in which the author, not limiting himself, like Plekhanov in the *Vademecum*, to the exposure of individual "unionists" in their theoretical sympathies with revisionism and their neglect of broad political questions, clearly demonstrated how the prevailing practice in Russia of self-limitation of social democracy to the everyday questions of factory struggle, instead of creating, as the "economists" thought, a pure class basis for the party, would in fact inevitably prepare such a situation in which the working masses, when they come to recognize their common civic political interests, would be inclined to conduct their struggle for them outside the ranks of their class organization, under the banner of some bourgeois-democratic party.

As in his previous tactical pamphlets, P. B. Axelrod, therefore, persistently put before social democracy the task not only of drawing the working class into direct political struggle against the existing state system, but also of making it, as an independent social force, the vanguard of all democracy, drawing all other social forces into the struggle against autocracy.

We returned to Russia with this program. It was formulated in the aforementioned "protest" against the anti-revolutionary *Credo*, worked out by Lenin, to which exiled Marxists in various places adhered in 1899. But in that same protest there was also formulated the organizational path that was to lead to the fulfillment of new tasks by the party. This was the path of restoring the party itself as an organized whole. The fact is that after the debacles of 1898, the party center had disappeared, and we explained its non-renewal not so much by conspiratorial-technical difficulties as by the triumph of "economistic" moods, which applied to the process of organizational unification the same method of "organic evolution" as to the process of the transition of the workers' struggle itself from more elementary slogans to more complex ones (the so-called "theory of stages"). From the point of view of the economists, the given level of movement corresponded to a weak federative connection between local organizations, and they were already inclined to regard attempts to hurry with the creation of a central apparatus for directing the movement as "Populism" and "Jacobinism," leading to a break with the masses.

To restore the party's Central Committee and its central organ, the "*Rabochaya Gazeta*" [*Worker's Newspaper*]—thus we formulated our demands on the party in 1899.

When Lenin and Potresov visited Moscow and Petersburg, they learned that this organizational program had been taken up by precisely those whom we considered our main opponents—the "workists" from the foreign "Union."

It turned out that two representatives of this union—P. Teplov and Ts. Kopelzon ("Timothy," "Grishin"), my old comrade from Vilna—had undertaken a journey through Russia at this time in order to persuade local committees to organize a second party congress. In the process, it became clear that the "Union's" emissaries, acquainted with our plans, were taking them into account and were projecting a proposal at the forthcoming congress to restore, as the official organ of the party, the "*Rabochaya Gazeta*" [*Worker's Newspaper*] with the editorship entrusted to our triumvirate. This was first mentioned in a conversation with Ulyanov in Moscow by Kh. Lalayants, the leader of the Ekaterinoslav committee and editor of "*Yuzhnyy Rabochiy*" [*Southern Worker*], who had come to sound out the attitude of the northerners toward the foreign project for a congress. Then, even before my arrival in Pskov, Timothy himself came there and in a conversation with Lenin and Potresov raised the same subject.

At first glance, the "Union's" plan should have seemed to us the most Machiavellian chess move. To overthrow Plekhanov and Axelrod, they took advantage of the prejudices of Russian practitioner-"economists" against too "political" a bent to their activity. But once in "power," they would soon have to feel that pure "economism" would decline and continue to decline. The high industrial conjuncture of the mid-1890s was being replaced by crisis, and the direct successes of the local strike movement, relatively easily won in 1895-97, had already by 1899 become anachronistic. Strikes increasingly became very tumultuous, and the soil for introducing political agitation became more favorable. In the industrial south, where the strike wave had reached with delay from the north, the tumultuous character of the movement, conditioned by an unfavorable economic conjuncture, immediately led it into such open collisions with the government (shootings of crowds and trials in Mariupol and other places) that the transition to "politics" in the form of all sorts of "tactics" was accomplished in the working masses comparatively easily. And at the same time, there began a social revival absent at the moment of the formation of our strike movement. For the workers' movement, an entirely different social milieu was being created than that which short-sighted empiricists had taken into account in working out their "theory of stages"—the gradual, "organic" transition of the proletarian movement from petty tasks to general ones. In 1899, the student body, having adopted the strike as an instrument from the workers, developed unprecedented in scale and enthusiasm "disorders," and the social resonance that the students' appearance encountered this time made it possible to hope that the political isolation of the workers on the arena of active struggle would soon end.

All this did not escape the consciousness of the "workists." For the most part practitioners—only B. N. Krichevsky was a typical litterateur, though lacking any theoretical firmness, though with great theoretical interests—they probably, without noticing it and without any self-constraint, grasped the right course. When visiting committees, their representatives assured that the entire split with the "Emancipation of Labor" group was essentially devoid of any principled foundation and that the upheaval they had effected was caused only by the dictatorial tendencies of Plekhanov and Axelrod and their intolerance toward those who differed in opinion, and had the sole aim of ensuring more active work of the "Union" in serving the work in Russia through brochures for mass agitation; that all attempts of the "old men" to construct a profound programmatic and tactical divergence between themselves and them were based on nothing: neither revisionism, nor the obscuring of political tasks, nor the organizational fragmentation of the party did the "Union," as a whole, sympathize with. And, as bright proof, the Union's proposal to us—notorious "orthodox Marxists" and "Plekhanovites"—was cited: come and "rule" the central organ of the party.

As I have already said, at first glance the proposal seemed Machiavellian: we were, as it were, wanted to be torn away from the "Emancipation of Labor" group, our solidarity with which we had solemnly proclaimed, and, placing us in "legal" frameworks of party-statute relations, make it difficult for us to unite with this group. But neither Lenin nor Potresov were inclined, in informing me of conversations with Kopelzon, to explain the actions of the "Union" exclusively by military cunning. On the contrary, they saw in them a recognition of the force of the position we had acquired in the party and a readiness to meet us halfway. And since the leaders of the "Union" themselves understood that the party was unthinkable without the "Emancipation of Labor" group, it was evident that what they wanted was not to set us at odds with it, but rather to pave the way with our hands to reconciliation with it.

The "Union's" proposals had to be taken seriously all the more because it had secured the support of two of the strongest organizations in Russia. On the one hand, the Bund stood behind it, whose foreign representatives were connected with the "Union." On the other hand, they had connected with the group of "*Yuzhnyy Rabochiy*" [*Southern Worker*], which, thanks to its combative revolutionary character and the talent of the newspaper, and thanks to the extraordinary organizational energy of its main working force—Abram Ginzburg ("Andrey," subsequently the well-known Kiev writer and Marxist Naumov)—had become the de facto regional center of the southeast. In my Turukhansk plans, I, partly on the basis of letters from my brother Sergei, had "aimed" precisely at this region as our main organizational support, believing that here the new understanding of the tasks of social democracy would be easier for us to implant than in the centers of the movement—in Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev. Therefore I chose Poltava for my residence.

The "Union's" proposal, supported by the Bund and the southerners, was sufficiently tempting. It immediately gave us a legal party position for influencing the consciousness of working activists and, moreover, saved us from any organized upheavals. We could expect serious opposition only from the group of pure "economists" of the Petersburg variety, who in their "*Rabochaya Mysl'*" [*Worker's Thought*] were clearly working their way toward the absurd idea of trade unionism in conditions of Russian autocracy, but who, thanks to the theoretical incoherence of their adherents, could in no way formulate and justify their program. The rest of the mass of practitioners would have followed us.

The flip side of the coin was the uncertainty of the political moods of these practitioners, and even of their leaders from the foreign "Union." The templates of the mid-decade still so dominated the minds of practitioners; they were so accustomed, even in constructing broader political tasks, to dance "from the stove"—from the strike in which the "bourgeoisie" directly opposed the "proletariat"—that with our plan to raise the banner of a nationwide struggle against autocracy, we had to ask ourselves: would not our official position and the control of the future Central Committee tie our hands and feet? Would not the hastily restored unification acquire the character of a rotten compromise?

Having discussed the matter from all sides, we decided to accept the invitation to the congress, which was supposed to take place no later than two months hence, and at once to correspond with the "Emancipation of Labor" group, proposing that it send us its mandate to this congress. We were to present to the congress a thorough "confession of faith," in which our understanding of the revolutionary tasks of the party would be clearly expressed, and we were to accept our collective candidacy as editors of the party organ only on the basis of the congress's approval of this program. If, given the brevity of the time remaining before the congress and the impossibility of personally traveling about to prepare the leading circles of local workers to accept our platform, the congress were to prove unprepared to develop a coherent program of action, we would insist that the congress take no principled binding decisions, that it not restore an official organ of the party, but leave it to us, at our own risk, to open discussion in our organ of the party's pressing tasks. In doing so, we also reckoned with the possibility that the congress would declare itself only a consultative conference.

This second outcome seemed to all of us the most desirable given the circumstances. All signs pointed to the fact that although the ideology of "economism" was exhausting itself in both working and intellectual circles, there reigned great confusion in the heads of practitioners, educated on "*Rabochaya Mysl'*" [*Worker's Thought*] and the writings of legal "critics of Marx," regarding programmatic and tactical questions.

The second question that concerned us was the attitude toward these very "critics of Marx," in whom the so-called "legal Marxists" had appeared. In exile, considering them the chief "instigators" of all ideological confusion and the most malicious opponents of revolutionary social democracy, we had intended to take them on immediately, as it were, "with bayonets."

Not without surprise, I learned from my comrades that, like the "workists," our "legal Marxists" had met them most cordially, clearly showing that they were ready to see in our group the natural leader of the social democratic party, and that they were inclined to support our undertakings directed at organizing a broad struggle against autocracy. My friends encountered such a mood not only in the eclectic V. Ya. Bogucharsky, but also in such doctrinaires of the "critique of Marx" as P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky. Having come to Petersburg with the firm intention of establishing the social democratic organ in the closest connection not only with the mass workers' movement but also with the broad oppositional-democratic movement that was developing ever more tumultously in recent years, my comrades became convinced that the most authoritative center of this latter movement was the group of "legal Marxists." Meanwhile, we considered the influence of the latter's activity on the practitioners of social democracy deeply pernicious not only because it was directed generally against the revolutionary foundations of Marxist doctrine, but also, in particular, because the revisionist "critique of Marx" was perceived by Russian adherents of it as a justification for the separation of the workers' movement from the revolutionary traditions of socialism and its limitation to almost trade-unionist "economism" within Russian bounds. Insofar as we considered the irreconcilable struggle with the revisionist group our immediate task, what relationship should we now establish with them when they declared their readiness to go with us and even after us in the name of the slogan of nationwide revolutionary struggle against autocracy that we were raising?

Despite the fact that both were convinced that Struve and Co. had embarked on a path that rapidly led them from the socialist camp into the camp of bourgeois liberalism, both Ulyanov and Potresov came away with the impression that in the near term this group would gladly content itself with the role of "second violin" if it saw that we, with our "orthodox" banner, had succeeded in organizing a strong revolutionary party of action. In the future, it seems to me, the prognoses of A. N. Potresov and V. I. Ulyanov diverged. Potresov hoped that the existence of such a party could for a long time secure ideological hegemony over all democratic elements of the intelligentsia for social democracy and tear them away from the constitutionalist-zemstvo bourgeois liberalism. On the contrary, Ulyanov, like me, rather expected that, in the end, that part of the intelligentsia which had found in revisionism a pretext and means to subject the basic values of the socialist worldview to the corrosive action of theoretical skepticism would find solace precisely in the bosom of this zemstvo constitutionalism, once the successes of the workers' movement had prepared the ground for its success. Both stood for an agreement with the Struve group, but Ulyanov envisioned this agreement "with a stone hidden in one's bosom," and, as subsequently became clear, did not consider it at all necessary that this stone not stick out too noticeably; whereas Potresov reckoned with the fact that agreement morally obligated both sides, and believed that it would impose on us the obligation of flexible tactics capable of consolidating the initial success.

After familiarizing myself with the opinion of my friends, I expressed my doubt regarding the very possibility of an agreement with the "critics" if we did not intend to renounce open and irreconcilable struggle for "orthodoxy." I was told that both Struve and Tugan in intimate conversations continue to emphasize their closeness to the social democratic party*) and maintain themselves as party comrades. At the same time, I was told—which I had not known until then—that the "orthodox" manifesto of the R.S.D.R.P., issued in 1898 after its first congress, containing the famous proposition that the further east, the less capable the bourgeoisie is of fulfilling revolutionary historical tasks—that this manifesto was written by the very same P. B. Struve, who so soon thereafter waged a campaign against all "orthodoxy."

In any case, we all agreed that conversations with Struve and his colleagues, who were to arrive soon in Pskov, should be conducted on the basis of our *credo*, clearly formulated by us, in which our position should be unambiguously emphasized not only on the question of revolutionary struggle with autocracy but also on the question of theoretical struggle against revisionism and reformism. I predicted that in that case the agreement would be broken off at the very beginning. "We shall see," my comrades replied to me.

Ulyanov undertook to draw up a prospectus of the new newspaper, with which we were then to acquaint our "friend-enemies," in order to put squarely before them the question of whether they intended to support us.

Among other things, it became clear to me that the question of financial resources on which we could rely to begin broad publishing and organizational work depended to a certain extent on the support, or at least the friendly neutrality, of the Struve group. We could not count on help from local committees, even leaving aside the question of whether we would reach agreement with the majority of them. The meager treasuries of local party organizations were altogether unprepared to support the enterprises we had in mind: a regularly appearing and technically accomplished printed organ, transport, a passport "factory," and the organization of "illegal" activities. For a start, our financial prospects were not bad. Apart from personal resources of A. N. Potresov, which he could dispose of, there were promises from A. M. Kalmykova,*) who entirely sympathized with our undertaking. Furthermore, Ulyanov had on the Volga an acquaintance who was a factory owner, who promised to supply him with a thousand or two rubles. But beyond that we already had to rely (through the personal connections of A. N. Potresov and A. M. Kalmykova) on people who, belonging to the circle of what Potresov later called "Marxist-seeming democracy," could close their purses to us if Struve and Co. declared us their enemy. One such person—the translator of Kant, Zhukovsky—if I remember correctly, by that time had also already promised 1,000 rubles for our newspaper.

A day or two later, our old comrade, the late Stepan Ivanovich Radchenko, arrived in Pskov and reported that with the next train there would arrive for negotiations P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky. For some reason V. Ya. Bogucharsky could not come. Neither did the engineer and industrialist Tillo, whom we expected—a social democrat since the 1880s, who at that time, together with S. I. Radchenko, embodied the "orthodox" tradition in Petersburg and helped him combat the pressure of "economistically" inclined youth in the "Union of Struggle."

The meeting took place at the apartment of Lyubov Nikolaevna Radchenko, who was serving a two-year term of open surveillance in Pskov for her long activity in the Petersburg Union of Struggle. Beforehand, we read and approved the prospectus of the new newspaper written by Vladimir Ilich.

During the reading, I observed the faces of our guests. I was curious to see how they would react to those expressions in which the "announcement" spoke of the harm brought to the revolutionary movement by the "critique of Marxism." On the face of M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky, there was visible either distress or bewilderment; at moments he was clearly restraining himself from interrupting the reading. On the contrary, Struve maintained an Olympian calm, through which, however, one could occasionally catch a slightly mocking glimmer in his eyes. At the end of the reading, his face expressed rather satisfaction, or even polite approval of what had been heard.

"Well, gentlemen, what do you think of all this?" asked Ulyanov.

Struve said something general and indefinite to the effect that, remaining of course with his opinion on certain questions, he, generally speaking, had nothing against the document. He spoke as if reluctantly, squeezing words out of himself. It was clear that he was not expressing his full thought.

To the naive Mikhail Ivanovich, diplomacy apparently did not appeal. He spoke heatedly about the fact that in that entire section of the declaration which discusses the state of social democracy and Marxism, he saw the point directed personally against him and Struve, and at that extremely unjustly, striking at the facts. It was precisely he and Struve who had always supported the *political* direction in social democracy, influencing the practitioners with whom they came into contact in the corresponding spirit, and giving articles on political themes for illegal publications. Meanwhile, our declaration makes "critique of Marxism" responsible for "economism" and the refusal to engage in political struggle. The very characterization of the critique of Marxism is given in such a way that he, Tugan, must ask himself: can they, with Struve, support our undertaking if this passage remains in the declaration? Struve, who had continued to remain silent, approved Tugan's outburst by his facial expression. Well, I thought to myself, how will Vladimir Ilich extricate himself from this delicate situation?

He immediately took the floor and attempted to counter Tugan's objection with factual material. The "dossier," assembled by him, turned out to be rather rich, though consisting of relatively minor facts. The whole matter concerned various attempts by older Petersburg social democrats (Tillo, Radchenko, and others) to organize some kind of literary statement against "economism" and thereby support Plekhanov. From the data adduced by Ulyanov, it followed that each time the "legal Marxists" refused to assist in such an undertaking, citing the fact that they considered any attacks on those conducting work among the proletariat to be tactless and harmful. Incidentally, it is possible that we first heard this argument from our opponents here at this very meeting as an explanation of their refusals. In any case, they pressed precisely on this explanation, on their reluctance to nurture internal party struggle. Ulyanov, and then Potresov, objected that on the contrary it was they who nurtured it, ideologically supporting the revolt against "orthodoxy" and thereby seducing the small fry of social democratic youth toward a break with the "Emancipation of Labor" group. Struve objected that he considered the removal of the "Emancipation of Labor" group from the leading role in the party to be an evil, and spoke with practitioners in that spirit. Generally, the conversation was conducted in very peaceful tones, and when Ulyanov expressed a readiness to soften somewhat the passage speaking of the role played by the "critics of Marxism," the matter clearly began to move toward an agreement. The dispute, which had already taken on a theoretical character, somehow of itself subsided, and when we asked: what, in the final analysis, is your attitude toward our undertaking, I was surprised to hear a firm declaration from Struve: we consider it necessary and will support it insofar as we are able, after which he asked to accept from him a monthly contribution, if I remember correctly, of 5 rubles. Tugan-Baranovsky, who apparently would not have minded continuing to argue and "bargain," said with a somewhat gloomy face that he was contributing too, as a monthly contribution, 10 rubles. Had we foreseen how our paths would diverge, we would probably have preserved as a historical monument the imperial ruble donated by the future most bitter enemy of socialism and revolution—for the founding of an organ dedicated to the passionate defense of socialism and revolution.

After our guests departed, we settled our affairs for the immediate future. It was decided that A. N. Potresov would soon travel abroad, enter into direct contact with Plekhanov and Axelrod, and already now concern himself with the publication of a theoretical journal, which in any case would be published abroad. As for the political newspaper, we for the time being had to reckon with the desire of the practitioners to attempt its publication in Russia. We ourselves were entirely skeptical of the possibility of ensuring the publication of the organ in Russia and hoped, if the congress entrusted us with its editorship, to persuade our comrades to move it to Germany. Potresov was therefore to clarify with German social democrats the possibility of setting up the newspaper conspiratorially in Germany: we did not want to print the newspaper in émigré centers, partly so as not to fall into too close contact with the émigré milieu, and partly to be closer to the Russian border. Ulyanov was to remain in Pskov until the party congress and represent our group at it either alone or together with me, and after the congress, if its results were favorable to our plans, to move also abroad; I myself was to proceed to Poltava, from there to establish connections with the southern organizations and specifically to draw closer to the group of "*Yuzhnyy Rabochiy*" [*Southern Worker*]. My own move abroad, once our enterprise had finally settled there, I considered necessary to postpone, in any case for several months, recognizing it necessary that at least one of us personally became acquainted with the state of the movement in the localities and with the new generation of workers, and personally gathered material for the first, most difficult issues of the new organ. My comrades agreed on this point, but were concerned that within several months I would manage to be "exposed" before I got around to crossing the border. The question for now remained open.